I started this blog when my husband and I were expecting our first child to document my pregnancy and warn people of all the things nobody tells you about. Then it followed our family's journey through secondary infertility. It turns out I forgot as much as I learned. One might think that motherhood has softened me...
One would be wrong.

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

1. Breastfeeding can be HARD. It's a round the clock effort and exhausting. But it is very rewarding when everything finally clicks.

2. If you have to pee, do it BEFORE you settle in to feed the baby. Nothing quite like yanking your pants up and down with one hand while trying to keep a hungry baby latched on because she SCREAMS if you try to put her down.

3. It takes about six weeks for the human body to harden to the effects of sleep deprivation. Before that, you WILL walk into things in a fog. People who haven't been there just don't understand and they never will. They think that because they pulled an all-nighter once in University, they know how you feel. Uh-huh. One all-nighter, eh? TRY TWELVE IN A ROW, BITCHES!

4. The don't intervene medically until the baby hasn't pooped for TEN DAYS. Sure, they look for signs of a blockage before then but they do nothing until Day 10 and even then it's only a glycerin suppository.

5. A baby's laugh is the very best sound in the whole world.

6. If any book/website/person tells you ALL THINGS MUST BE THIS WAY, you have my permission to ignore anything that book/website/person is saying in perpetuity. Babies are little humans. Their needs are simple, but their behaviour does not fit in neat little boxes. Anyone who says that it does is a fucking idiot.

7. They're best off when you leave them the fuck alone to figure out their own bodily functions. Once they've regained their birth weight, waking them up every 2 to 3 hours to eat just makes you AND baby miserable. How would you feel about getting woken up from a "deep" sleep to someone shoving food in your face? Yeah. You'd probably tell the person trying to force feed you to piss off.

8. Watching your baby meet a new milestone will make your heart swell. My baby rolled over today for the first time and it brought tears to my eyes.

9. Sure, you're a parent now, but you're still a spouse too. Having sex while keeping one ear out for the baby on the monitor is NOT hot at all. But if you want to keep a happy marriage going, you have to find the time to treat each other like a couple in love.

10. It'll be no time at all before you can't remember a life before baby, and it doesn't matter because a life with baby is just SO much better.